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WD OST: Sky Sanctuary’s Theme

Hi folks, today I want to present the 4th track by the Wizard’s Duel OST: The Sky Sanctuary’s Theme.

It is not to be confused with Sonic more famous song: my track has been composed for the Holy stage, the Sky Sanctuary level, inspired by Christianity as shown in the Bosses and Stages’ post. There our mages will encounter Auriel the Archangel. I don’t mean to spoil anything else, so you will have to figure out what will be going on just by my composition, if you can!

Couple of months ago I wrote a minimal harp riff, based on this scale:

E, F, A, B, C

expressed in intervals like this: 1 b2 4 5 b6

If I look a bit stiff to you, remember I’m the guardian of justice and order

it sounded great, something like oriental traditional christian music (Armenian or Copt). I made research and find out this is a hindi Raga known as Asavari scale. Traditionally it is used as an ascendant scale only, but mine goes down, so I will call this one “Asavari ascendant inverse”, because Asavari descendant is totally different.

By the way, I put a french horn as the bass, to sustain the harp and give a bright powerful touch to the atmosphere.

horn goes like this:

A, C, B, D

that’s a bass sequence you will find often in my composition for its progressive modern taste and crescendo potential: that’s a two minor 3rd passage separated by an half tone in C, B change.

I’ve added a strings ensemble to keep the flavor a bit more occidental and to clarify the harmony

I was satisfied: it was transmitting a sense of initial triumph tarnished by anxiety, but I didn’t know how to continue.

An angel warrior with a old school halo

Of course I wanted to add choirs: so I browsed my Gregorian music library, and dragged in the first AMEN I found. A slight stretch and the magic happened. I didn’t believe how perfectly it fit. The chant was on time and on harmony, with the right consonance and dissonance. I was astonished, especially because that min7b5 is not an everyday chord.

Once the strophe was solid enough I added flute and clarinet, (often angels are painted playing wind-instruments), timpani, cymbals and militar snare (caelestis militiae rules!).

As I explained in my planned music for Wizards’ Duel every stage’s track will be split in loops triggered on different events. That’s one more reason to have heterogeneous moods in a single song: so after a gong a trance brass starts pumping (I really love how it rises!) together with a 2/2 slow rock drum, leading to the chorus:

Still in Am, here arrive the church organ, playing a minimal refrain already present in Rake’s theme. That’s a Wizards’ Duel Main Theme variations as soon you will find. Horns blows strong ending on a triumphalist apotheosis closed by tubular bells.

I was waiting for you, Wizard…

And here in my mind the player lands to the 3rd level of the Sky Sanctuary, where Auriel waits. They talk, and we need a bit of calm to prepare the gran finale. That’s why I left just a tubular bell… But I felt it was empty, and all the tracks was a bit “feminine”. And I needed an intro too. So I found out on freesound.org an orthodox celebration. I reversed it to lose eventual intelligibility and twist the monody. It was perfect: do you remember the Eyes wide shut OST? Jocelyn Pook used this trick for the Masked Ball scene.

And the last battle begin: the first strophe returns this time accompanied by war timpani and drums until the last apotheosis, where glitchy hats and organ arpeggiator takes us to the last, long, breathing celestial, and resolutive… AMEN.

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